Page 69 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
“So do you,” I counter, setting the bottle back down and returning to the living room to join Ashen’s side. I slip my hand into his. Roman’s brows flicker, his gaze trapped in the middle distance between us as he tries to work out his thoughts. “You reacted to the scent. It was familiar to you.”
Roman’s tongue traces his bottom lip as though tasting memory from a current of air. “It was, but I couldn’t place it,” he replies, his attention flicking briefly to Cole as he enters the room with Eryx and Aglaope, the three carrying platters of pastries from the kitchen to lay them out on one of the side tables. When Roman shifts his gaze back to mine, it’s as though he’s fighting to remember something he believes he forgot. “I think I know the scent, but I don’t know how.”
I nod, understanding that he’s trying to cast a net around a memory that might not even exist. I pick up one of the vials from the coffee table and pass it to him so he can test the scent again. “I think it’s familiar because it’s the building blocks of us all. The elements of all immortals. Angels. Demons. Witches, werewolves, and vampires. Whatever gods made us, we carry the elements of them, fractured and divided among us. But the demigods, their children, I think they carried all those same building blocks of the magic that made the rest of us.”
Cole’s heart trips over itself, the beat stuttering before it quickens as he lays down his plate, a little tremor rippling through the ceramic when he sets it down. “Demigods? What’s going on?”
“How do you know it’s not just a bit of every creature in there?” Roman asks, ignoring Cole’s question as he raises the vial to his face and inhales. It’s as though he’s determined to hold on to the chance to sort something out without the complication of his damaged memory.
“I don’t know for sure. But given the location listed on the vial, I’m willing to bet it’s likely not just a combination of immortals.” I turn to Ashen, squeezing his hand as Davina stirs on the couch, her hand traveling across her eyes as she starts to wake. “Évora? That’s where you and Davina were?”
Ashen nods, grief rising in his features before he tamps it down beneath a blanket of surging heat. “Davina’s coven was just outside the town. We had a cottage on the southern boundary of their territory,” he says as he nods in Davina’s direction, his voice little more than a whisper. “That’s where I reaped her soul.”
Cole’s voice is so quiet when he speaks, so heavy with the weight of time and loss. But as soft as it is, it cuts through the room like a freshly forged blade.
“Évora?” he asks.
The flesh on my neck tingles. Fine hairs rise on my arms.
Cole’s voice floats up from memory, from the time we sat in the villa in Ravello and drank wine with Urtur.I was supposed to protect him, he’d said.It was my purpose.
A cold wave ripples through my veins as I look down at Davina, her eyes open now and widening with the alarm of sensing something very wrong without knowing exactly what it is. I glance at Aglaope, who scrutinizes the scene as though calculating odds at a gladiatorial battle. Ashen’s confusion pulls at the mark on my chest and I hold tighter to his hand, my palm going slick.
“Cyrus,” I say, reaching my free hand to curl around Davina’s arm as I try to tug her to her feet. “Please take Davina and Aglaope back to—”
“Évora?” Cole says again.
Godno. Not there. I swallow a thick lump of dread that sticks to my sternum and twists around my heart. “Cyrus? Their rooms please?”
Cyrus is about to come fetch Davina when Cole cuts in front of him and blocks his access, his gaze bounding between Davina and Ashen. “You were in Évora?”
“Yes,” Ashen replies, his eyes darting between Cole and Davina, confusion weighing heavily in that one simple syllable.
“I was there too. When I was an angel. I was in hiding, protecting someone.” Cole says, color leaching from his skin.
It was my purpose, Cole’s voice echoes from memory.Loving him was an unexpected gift.
Ashen’s hand grows hot around mine and I try to tug him with me to shield Davina from Cole’s increasingly wild gaze, but his feet seem to have cemented to the floor as the realization takes hold.
“Protectingwho?”
“His name was Dimitrios. He was a demigod.”
Shit. Ohshit.
The scene around me freezes, just for an instant. Davina stops breathing as Ashen shifts his glare between her and my sister, smoke billowing from his back to kiss the floor. Aglaope stands straight and still, her lips set in a tight line. Eryx seems to have lost all light. Even his wings are dulled by heartache. Ediye’s hand is curled in a fist at her chest as her eyes swirl with the universe of power trapped beneath their immortal lens. Roman still blocks Wynter from view, his arm hovering behind him, his muscles bulging as though he’s ready to grab her and run. I feel the weight of Cyrus’s gaze on me as his hand tightens on the hilt of his sword. And Cole, he’s the worst of all. His gaze is fused to the vial clutched in Roman’s fingers, his grief stitched together with threads of brightening rage.
“Dimitrios?” he says, his voice so small that I want to fall to my knees.
The stillness lasts only a breath longer before the room erupts in a salvo of sound and motion. The furious stampede of heartbeats hum like war drums beneath the rising voices. Smoke and cinders crackle in Cole’s wake as he rushes toward us, his hand outstretched for either the ampule on the coffee table or Davina’s neck, I can’t be sure. Cyrus wraps a thick arm around Cole’s chest, keeping the point of his drawn blade trained on my friend’s neck as sparks hiss across the floor.
“Settle yourself, demon. You will not touch her,” Cyrus says, his words as much a soothing reassurance as a warning in the distraught demon’s ear, the only sound of calm among the string of his soul-shattering cries that mix with Davina’s apologies. The scent of tears fills the air. Cole’s. Davina’s. Ediye and Eryx’s. Mine. But through the glassy film, my eyes find Aglaope, and her expression is grim as she begins to understand the dynamics unraveling around her.
“You,” Cole seethes, his skin reddened by blotches of fury and streaked with tears as he stares at Davina. “It wasyou?”
Cole’s lungs heave against Cyrus’s hold on his chest as Eryx and Ediye attempt to comfort him. Ashen steps between them, blocking Davina from view.
“No, brother. I was the one who told Davina there was a demigod nearby. It was my knowledge to protect, and I did not. It was me who failed,” Ashen says as he bows his head, folding a fist across his heart. “I am sorry. Truly sorry.”
